Jaruzelski cites `deep respect'

Christine Spolar, Tribune foreign correspondentCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The gesture was testimony to Pope John Paul II's lasting power of reconciliation. Even Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader, felt compelled to bid the most powerful Roman Catholic in the world goodbye.

Jaruzelski, still ramrod straight and shrouded behind dark glasses, walked into the Vatican's Embassy in Warsaw this week to pen a few words of respect to his toughest adversary. This was no time for false sentimentality, the avowed non-believer said. It was a personal salute to the late pontiff, a brave fighter, a deep thinker and a most patriotic Pole.

"It was from me," Jaruzelski said in an interview Wednesday, "not something I felt I had to do as a former president. . . . Rather, it was my privilege to personally meet with the pope, and those meetings, even now, remain in my deepest memories."

No two men represented the opposing forces in the battle for Poland's destiny in the 1980s better than the white-robed pontiff and the small, bespectacled general. The former Karol Wojtyla and Jaruzelski were among the same generation of Poles torn apart by World War II. In its aftermath, they chose the most divergent of paths, and value systems, for their lives.

Wojtyla studied for the priesthood. Jaruzelski joined the army. As each rose to the heights of power, in the church and the communist hierarchy, they were on a collision course.

In his first visit to Poland as pontiff, John Paul II spoke about faith, the human spirit and the love of his native land. Men like shipyard worker and activist Lech Walesa were enthralled by his words. Communists like Jaruzelski became profoundly nervous.

"He woke us up," Walesa said about the pope's return to Poland in an interview this week. "We had been struggling in the 1960s and 1970s and had given up. But he spoke so well and good that we began thinking deeply about it. And we changed his words into action."

The Solidarity trade union, a fierce resistance movement, was formed in the next year. By 1981, Jaruzelski imposed martial law to outlaw Solidarity, a move he has since defended as a pre-emptive step to avoid a Soviet invasion. The pope came back to Poland in 1983 to praise the Polish spirit--again, stoking desire for a free Poland--and to meet privately with Jaruzelski to end martial law.

That, Jaruzelski said, was the first of eight meetings he had with the pontiff over the next 20 years. Each time, each man was assessing the other, he said.

Jaruzelski said the pope, even as an adversary, was sensitive to the pressures he faced in the last tumultuous years of communism. "One of the greatest qualities of the pope was his ability to listen with great attention and focus," he said Wednesday. "It applied to me with all of the meetings I had.

"Of course, it was obvious at the time" that the two were caught in a great human struggle, Jaruzelski said. "The pope supported Solidarity. I was in opposition to it. . . . But the pope was aware of the reality of the times and he knew the situation here was explosive."

Martial law ended after the pope's visit. By 1989, Jaruzelski's authority was diminished, and the entire Soviet system was crumbling. Jaruzelski held office in a transition government in Poland. In the next year, as Walesa rose to be the first freely elected president of Poland, Jaruzelski left the public stage. He remains a deeply controversial figure.

Still, he maintained contact with the pope. The two Poles met three more times, once in 1991 in Warsaw and twice in Rome, the last time in 2001 in the pope's private apartment at the Vatican. Each time, Jaruzelski said, the pope was engaged and intent on hearing about the transition in Poland.

It was characteristic of the pope's intellect, Jaruzelski said, that he listened and sought information, even from those with whom he disagreed. "We had different roles but . . . we were from the same generation," said Jaruzelski, now 81. "We had the full awareness of the tragedy of our nation."

"Don't misunderstand me. . . . I don't think we're on the same level. I consider the pope to be one of the greatest men in history," he said.

"I'm not talking about this as a religious experience because I am not a religious man. I'm talking about that which comes from a deep respect for a man.